Making a list, checking it twice.

There's a story, apparently true, of a terrible accident involving an airplane attempting to land on a very wintery day and hitting a snow plow.  As the plane was approaching, the air traffic controller radioed to the snow plow operator to "Clear the runway". While to an air traffic controller that command meant one thing--"Get out of the way, a plane is about to land"--to a snow plow operator it connoted something very different; i.e., "Remove the snow." That confusion in the meaning of terms led to a very sad result.

We are well removed from Jesus' time on earth, the Jewish culture in which he lived and taught, and the worldview which his disciples and his listeners brought to the task of understanding events around them. Consequently there is a real danger of reading into concepts found in the Gospels the meanings that those words, metaphors, and ideas would have now, not necessarily what they would have meant to the original listeners. We are often like that air traffic controller, as we handle ancient writings, who did not appreciate what a term meant in a snow plow operator's context.

[Just in passing, I spent many years grinding my teeth in frustration while listening to so-called bible teachers telling groups of would-be bible students to interpret the Scriptures simply by deciding "what it means to you". Amazingly the students typically found whatever it was they wanted to find. Who needs knowledge of historical context, original meanings, and so on when one can find whatever one prefers by using nothing but modern cultural priorities and biases. But I digress.]

We are exploring the fundamental New Testament concept of being born again. But I had not until recently researched what the term mean to a first century AD Jew. What would have gone through Nicodemus' mind when Jesus told him not to be surprised that he (Nicodemus) would have to be born again?

Just before I give you this list, one observation about being born the first time. According to some Jewish sources I've consulted, "born of water" was simply a Jewish idiom for physical birth (a reference to amniotic fluid), and had nothing to do with baptism. Whatever those of the baptismal regeneration school of thought think of the matter, to Nicodemus Jesus' use of the term would have simply meant the physical birth of a baby.

To a Jew of that day, being born again could mean any of the following:

• The conversion of a non-Jew (or Gentile) to Judaism.
• Coming of age, the bar mitzvah celebrated when Jewish boys turn 13. The equivalent celebration for Jewish girls is called the bat mitzvah. 
  
• Getting married.
• Repentance. For a pious man like Nicodemus repentance was probably a regular practice, but every observant Jew would repent of his/her sins at least yearly at Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
• Baptism. Jewish people were very concerned about ritual cleanliness, so there were many immersions in Rabbinic Judaism. When they came out of the water they were ritually clean, and thus able to participate in religious rites. Remember how the Pharisees baptized not only themselves but even their dishes and their beds (Mark 7:1-4). 
• Ordination to become a rabbi, which Nicodemus, "a teacher of Israel", certainly was.
• Being crowned king. 

 I can just imagine Nicodemus running down the list as Jesus was telling him, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

"What the heck is Rabbi Jesus talking about" (however a pious 1st century Jew might phrase it)? I'm certainly here, so I was physically born once. I'm a Jew so there's no need for conversion. I'm well past 13. I'm married. I repent routinely. I practice ritual immersions as any good Pharisee would. I'm a rabbi myself. What's left--that I become the next king of Israel?"

Rather than answering in a confused fashion, Nicodemus might simply have been humouring Jesus when he replied, "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"

Jesus took no offense, but reiterated, "No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water (physical birth) and the Spirit (birth from above). Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit."

What was Jesus saying? Stay tuned.

When in doubt about the Gospels--ask a Jew

I have had very few Jewish friends and acquaintances in my life. There was only one fellow student in my undergraduate Commerce student days at Queen's whom I knew to be Jewish--Ted, I think he was called. I had an in-law for a time who had been a  European Jewish refugee. My wife taught with a Jewish woman from Montreal who was a great believer in the efficacy of chicken soup. One of my late father's best friends was Jewish. He also served as Dad's haberdasher. And just recently my wife and I have made a new friend here in Abbotsford who lost his grandparents in the Holocaust.

I did attend seminary in Chicago with a Jewish man from Brooklyn who had converted to Christianity well into his adult years. He had not been particularly observant religiously to that point. His description of the event was quite interesting. He said the moment that he decided to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah it was as if his mind opened and a wind rushed through.

That's about it. While I have enjoyed the writing, singing, and acting of many Jewish artists, and been blessed by the economic leadership of Jewish economists and businesspeople, and been enthralled by the wonderfully principled stands of certain Jewish thinkers and activists (the Hon. Irwin Cotler comes to mind), I have not had the good fortune of knowing many personally.

It came as a considerable surprise to me, then, that I had a breakthrough in my wrestling match with the concept of being born again through an encounter (admittedly via podcast) with a Jew. He was being interviewed in my son and daughter-in-law's church in Ontario. With respect to the concept of being born again, he mentioned that to Jews of Jesus' time, the notion was well established and had specific meanings (see http://www.themeetinghouse.com/teaching/archives/2013/one-church-2013/week-4-messianic-judaism-5479). This led me to much fruitful research.

I have to remind myself from time to time that Jesus was almost entirely immersed in the Jewish thought world. His encounters with non-Jews were few. His audiences would have been virtually 100% Jewish. When he spoke, he used metaphors and parables that could easily be identified by his audience as typical of their experience. When he referred to backup material, it was always the Jewish scriptures (with Deuteronomy being his first choice). No wonder that his disciple Peter balked at having to do something completely at odds with Old Testament teaching when commanded to eat "unclean" food (Acts 10:9-16). Jesus' brother James and other early church leaders was similarly scrupulous about following Jewish traditions (Acts 11:1-3).

So what did it mean to a Jew--and a very high ranking one at that--when Jesus said to him, "You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again."

That's next.

Locked and loaded

We're back from a wonderful month-long vacation to Ontario. We drove some 12,000 kms., traversing five provinces and six states. Our single most unique experience was to stumble across a virtually abandoned townsite called Ingomar, Montana. Twelve citizens are left from what was at one time a thriving little town with a major sheep-raising industry. We ate a delicious bean soup lunch in the restaurant, called the Jersey Lily, and had a great time chatting with the cook/server, Pam, and one of the customers, an outspoken old cowboy I'll call Wyatt.

Wyatt and another gentleman, wearing the obligatory stetsons, were having an intense time looking at a newspaper and discussing "g-dd-m cowardly sissies", which I gather referred to certain government folk, in very loud voices. A disparaging reference to former President Carter led me to ask if people in these parts were Republicans. "No, Wyatt replied, we're conservatives." At that point, I discarded any thought of raising gun control issues with him as a point of conversation.

My mind has gone back to that remarkable two hours in Ingomar many times in the days since we returned to beautiful British Columbia. My fundamentalist upbringing, which will always be a part of my makeup no matter how hard I try to shake it, made me want to dismiss the customers at the cafe as having any particular spiritual sensitivities, particularly given the language employed. I can just imagine what they might have said had I asked them if they were born again!

[As Ned Flanders' wife, Maude, said to Bart Simpson, "I went to bible camp to learn to be more judgmental."]

But I am trying to retain the good of my early Christian training (high view of Scripture, gratitude to God for his provision of salvation, a life of purpose and ethical/moral decision-making) with my newer conviction that one is a member of God's kingdom unless one ultimately chooses otherwise. In what way would someone for whom God's name is a convenient curse be born from above? Would he truly be a child of God in every sense that I like to think that I am?

That's what I have been struggling with for these last several posts. It would be a lot easier if I just bought into some established school of thought about who's in and who's out but, as I've indicated in earlier posts, I believe that would place God in a nice, tidy box that pretends to tie up all the loose ends while turning Him into a contradictory and arbitrary deity. British theologian J.B. Phillips penned the title Your God is Too Small for his best-selling book. I believe that he wrote better than he knew.

At any rate, we lumber on. My son was good enough to direct me to certain Jewish sources that might be of some help in sorting out what being born from above means. Let's see where they lead.